Bi amping new and old style NAP140

Posted by: robw on 28 March 2002

There is a possibility of me having first refusal on an old style NAP140 when my friend upgrades his system. Price will be around £200.

Any opinions on bi-amping with my current 'new' style NAP140?

Current System: LP12/Lingo/Ekos/Dynavector DV20X/ NAC72/ NAP140/ Linn Tukans.

RobW

Posted on: 28 March 2002 by Martin Payne

Get the serial number of the unit, and check with Naim what work would be required to match them up.

Any amp over 10 years old (e.g. an old-style unit) will be in need of a service. Budget for this (£100-ish?)

It's worth pointing out that the standard SNAICs will lead you to one amp on the bass's, and the other on the trebles.

Although the benefit here is that you can put the better amp on the treble (standard Naim advice), and avoid channel imbalance, the best results are apparently to be had with non-standard SNAICs, so one amp does left speaker, and the other right.

Of course, Naim don't really recommend bi-amping (prefering to upgrade to a single, better amp)

Posted on: 28 March 2002 by Justin

I think the original poster was talking about biamping, rather than going active, which is what, I believe, the naim manual calls "biamping".

Anyway, if you are going to do standard biamping (non-active), then using the standard snaics will put one amp on bass, and one amp on tweeters.

But, no need to get differant snaics (are there such things, anyway)--just modify the signal wires in your PSU so that two left channels go to one amp and two right channels go to the other amp.

Judd

Posted on: 29 March 2002 by robw

Yes I am initially thinking of passive bi-amplification initially. I forgot to mention I do have a HiCap attached to the Pre.

Thanks for the information so far.

Rob W

Posted on: 29 March 2002 by Duncan Fullerton

Rob,

If you want to go left/right rather than bass/treble, I'm sure Naim can knock you up a pair of SNAIC's for the job. I feed four 135's out of the back of a HiCap with 2 into 1 cables thay made for me.

Well it saves getting the soldering iron out on your HiCap ...

Posted on: 29 March 2002 by Justin

e-mail me if you want step by step instructions on how to wire your hicap for horizontal passive biamplification.

Judd
juddson1@msn.com

Posted on: 29 March 2002 by David Dever

quote:
But, no need to get differant snaics (are there such things, anyway)--just modify the signal wires in your PSU so that two left channels go to one amp and two right channels go to the other amp.

Last I knew, the pair of pre-made vertical bi-amp cables (DIN 4-4) cables (made of the same wire used for 250/135/500 interconnects) cost $150 US, if you don't feel inclined to re-wire your power supply...or if you're out of output sockets!